InDesign offers a lot of features for graphic designers, many of which are completely missing from Quark XPress. One of those features is ACCURATE high resolution graphic display of images in your documents. Unfortunately, the more graphics you add, the slower InDesign becomes to work in. One easy way to put a little kick back into ID is to adjust the display prefs of the document you're working in.

Did you know that if you click and hold (or CTRL-Click) an application icon in the dock it brings up a menu that gives you the basic most frequently used functions of that particular application? For example iTunes gives you the functions of a simple remote. Suitcase enables you to open font sets. System preferences gives you all of its sections in alphabetical order.

Some may have noticed that the latest tip in the blog has been posted by Jim, alias MacGizmo. An old friend of mine from Phoenix, Arizona. He's extremely well informed and experienced graphic designer. He also used to work for a Mac magazine as a journalist. He was kind enough to agree to join me in the efforts to enchance the CB blog, so you should be reading his tips from now on as well.

If you still haven't experienced the joys of Adobe InDesign, and you frequently find yourself swearing at Quark XPress for providing you with a perfectly useless preview image of your placed Photoshop EPS file (duotone files require the use of EPS), then this is for you!

Ever wonder if it's worth learning all the shortcuts that each application offers? Apparently it is.

I did a test to see how much time one gains using key combos, rather than navigating and pointing to menus with the cursor. I timed three versions of a certain set of operation that required moving between applications, opening and saving files and menu operations such as copying, pasting, filters, duplication, etc.